Eliminate the label on fruit and vegetables: with the printer it is easier to get rid of the biocompostable bag

When the law that required the use of compostable bags for fruit and vegetables came into force in 2018, the legislator did not consider a small detail: the price label that we stick on it after weighing, usually made of thermal paper, does not it is biodegradable. The result has been that in all these years the campaign designed to reduce the use of plastic has brought about some unwanted effects: at best, hundreds of millions of wasted biodegradable bags, given that it is practically impossible to detach the label leaving the bag intact. In the worst and highly probable case, however, hundreds of millions of labels mistakenly end up in wet waste together with the bag, rather than in the dry bin.

For some time, even the protagonists of large-scale distribution (large-scale distribution) and beyond have been wondering how to solve the problem which, in addition to being an environmental one, represents a considerable cost center for large-scale distribution. A possible solution comes from Padua and is called TT-Hourglass, which translated means “hourglass” and sounds like a warning of the little time still available to take care of the world and the environment around us before it’s too late.

TT-Hourglass is the result of a long research and development process that began 13 years ago with the first printers linerless: in practice it is a small hourglass-shaped printer, which is able to interface with any scale on the market, completely eliminating the use of paper for labeling in the fresh departments. Just use the compostable material shopper as the raw material on which to print: in practice, the handle of the bag, a flap suitably punched at the bottom of the same or a flap in compostable material that I can take from a dispenser and tie to the bag once printed, become the medium on which TT-Hourglass prints all data. The flap of compostable material is inserted directly between the two “bulbs” of the hourglass, which, “talking” to the scale, will transfer the necessary information to then proceed with the payment (type of product, price, weight, barcode, etc. )

The most obvious benefits are two, as its inventor explains, Enrico FrizieroCEO of T-Trade and former creator of the TT No Waste app, to combat the waste of food and medicines: “The elimination of the use of the label clearly generates two very important results, the first of an ecological nature, zero deforestation to produce paper: considering that on average to make a ton of silicone paper, the one normally used to make labels, at least 15 trees are needed, the numbers linked to large-scale distribution are impressive. Considering the needs of an average supermarket chain, up to 3,000 trees a year are estimated. Talking about several tens of thousands of trees just for Italian needs is more than plausible”. The second advantage concerns the fact that the consumer will no longer have to remove the label from the shopper to make a correct differentiationas the thermal transfer of TT-Hourglass allows you to maintain the compostability of the bag and therefore be able to safely reuse it.

“An invention that clearly benefits the environment, but also large retailers: we have in fact calculated that the saving of consumables thanks to the application of our hourglass is between a range of 70 and 80% for the GDO. For the most important chains it amounts to a few hundred thousand euros a year. The second great advantage is linked to the productivity of the scale which can reach approximately 300% more autonomy compared to the classic use of a roll of labels, with much less downtime and slowdowns in the purchasing process”, concludes Friziero. TT- Hourglass, for which a worldwide patent has been obtained, will be presented for the first time at Euroshop in Dusserldorf in Germany at the end of February.